Wednesday, January 15, 2014

Card Converting My 1 for 2 New

A while back I busted a couple of boxes of 13-14 UD Series 1. I am currently riding a pretty bad streak of box busting that has gone on for a few months now which of course is one reason why I haven't been posting my breaks. The other reason is time, my posts have been pretty infrequent because life is demanding these days. One box I busted of 13-14 UD Series 1 was even missing cards, let alone giving me garbage ones. Two packs in the box were three cards light with no cool patch-like inserts to explain the lack of base. So I contacted Upper Deck, filled out the correct paper work etc and a month or so later they sent two replacement packs.

First pack had a pretty rare (1:428 packs) game-used hit of fellow Thunder Bay-ite Patrick Sharp. The second pack had an even more rare (1:720 packs) Lord Stanley's Heroes Teemu Selanne. Having had success selling my Nick Lidstrom Heroes from the same set I decided to sell Teemu.

Cool card, but I just don't find they are worth as much to me as they are to other collectors. I was able to use all the funds from this sale (just short on the shipping part) but I was able to buy the following pair!

13-14 Artifacts Nail Yakupov Rookie /999

I had no luck with my box, but I was able to not only get one Yakupov rookie which is numbered to /999.

13-14 Artifacts Nail Yakupov Ruby Rookie /299

I was able to get a second numbered to /299. The seller had both together in the same auction and I was able to land it for a very agreeable price.

So while my UD Boxes were both busts, I was able to convert a nice gesture by Upper Deck into two Yakupov rookies which I would love to have hit in my boxes and 2 of them for that matter. Both are much more limited than the Young Gun version and for now both will remain in my collection. I could be tempted to trade one if the right offer came along but I will certainly keep the Ruby one for good.

Hahaha I know eh? When I used to teach IB Chemistry, I had a pretty awesome scale and I was tempted to boy a box just to see if packs had different weights etc. Anyway, I never did and and I don't pack search so I guess I will always just wonder how they do it.